Australia Travel Review: Sydney, Queensland, Cairns, Great Barrier Reef

I would have used this company. I would have used a local company that knew Australia better 

Travel Company's Comments

It is disappointing to read this review. Unfortunately this family’s vacation to Australia was severely impacted by a cyclone that forced them to miss several days of touring in northern Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef. We spent many hours helping the family when they arrived in Australia in rearranging their itinerary. We called every tour operator in advance to advise them of the unfortunate interruption of this family’s vacation and asked each operator to ‘take special care’ of the family.

We are not sure why this client believes we “clearly do not know Australia”. The agent that put this itinerary together has been putting Australian vacations together for 20 years. She has travelled to Australia 7 times and traveled the country extensively. Our company is owned and operated by 2 Australians and our agents have on average 17 years of experience in designing custom vacations to Australia and the South Pacific.

Our Australian representative, Glenn, worked through his weekend for this family to redo their arrangements. There were however, two situations where Glenn was not able to help them: The family had checked their luggage to Cairns on Virgin Australia. After arriving in Sydney the family decided not to travel on to Cairns. They asked Glenn to get their luggage back from Virgin Australia. He advised them he was not in a position to do that, they would have to speak with Virgin Australia.  The family had also made hotel arrangements themselves directly with Starwood and asked Glenn to make changes to their reservation. As our company did not make those arrangements, we were not going to be able to change the reservation on behalf of the family  – they would have to do that themselves.

Our complimentary Travel Protection Insurance covered this family’s losses due to the disruption of the cyclone. This enabled them to recover more than $8000 in cancelled touring they would have lost without our free service. We helped them with their paperwork for their insurance claim when they returned.

We are always disappointed when weather or other outside factors impact our client’s vacations. Vacations are supposed to be fun, relaxing and stress free. Our job, when events like this occur, is to help rearrange flights, accommodation and touring to alleviate as much stress as we can. We are sorry our efforts to help this family where not satisfactory for them.